Memphis Diaries: Part I

Memphis bridge - Adobe Stock

Some days I can't quite believe we made it here. In December, we packed most of the very last of our belongings into the truck and car. Stuffed, more like - the car was on a trailer, and everything I thought I might need in the apartment for the first week was wedged inside. Clothes, kitchenwares, bedding - stuffed.

I wrote "most of the last" because some of it just didn't fit. The vacuum? Left with my brother-in-law to donate (we would have donated it ourselves, but it was, like 11pm or so). And there's a lampshade we barely fit into the truck that we left with my mom to mail later.

Housekeeping, House Selling

So! It's been a while. So let's breeze through some things -

Results of the Sparkle Horse Giveaway of 2016? Becca Peterson is our winner! She didn't find a horse, but she did find a sparkle elephant! Congrats to Becca!

Other fun finds included this sparkle longhorn head, discovered by Monica, which is a thing I'm sure several of you have been looking for -

Remembering Memphis

Sometimes it feels funny to experience Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Portland, OR. Political correctness is...assumed, and expected. That's not to say racism doesn't happen, but it's different, and often more subtle.

Not so in Memphis. You can't get through the morning commute without noticing the stark racial and socio-economic divide. When I drove Danny to work in the morning, we'd be driving from the east side of the city to the center along with other Caucasian commuters, usually driving newer American cars or German imports.

On my way back to our hotel, though, I drove back with the African American service employees headed to work on the east side. The cars were either much older, much flashier, or both. Sometimes the tires were worn so deeply that the metal core sparked on the asphalt, and yet I've never seen so many Mustangs and Corvettes as I did on Memphis roads.

I'll never forget what it was like to be driving somewhere new, and to transition from a clean, photogenic neighborhood into a poorer, less safe one - with only a street or two in between. Antebellum-style houses would give way to loan shops, alcohol stores, run-down restaurants, and most tragically, funeral homes. So many funeral homes. All of these would have bars on the windows.

Danny and I once picked up Thai food for takeout, from a restaurant we later realized was near the Hickory Hill area. We counted the number of cop cars we saw until we returned to the hotel; there were seven.

Some time on the internet will tell you more about the racial/socio-economic divides that plague the city. Violent crime rates in the poorer neighborhoods are some of the highest in the nation. Public schools are predominately populated with African-American students; most of the middle-class Caucasian families send their children to private schools or home-school.

Memphis is, of course, home to the Lorraine Hotel, where Dr. King was assassinated. That site is now the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. Having spent time in that city, I can only hope and pray that one day it will be a place where grace and generosity will abound. As it was two years ago, I found it a city that could alternately the friendliest and the most frightening place I'd ever been.

As a Caucasian woman in the Pacific Northwest, I feel profoundly under-qualified to offer any sort of commentary on race relations. But I've traveled enough that in remembering Martin Luther King Jr., I can't shake the profound sense that we still have so very, very far to go. 

Lemon Tartlets in a Small Kitchen

Isn't it pretty? I used the recipe (both the filling and the crust) from the Smitten Kitchen recipe.  With...well...subtle changes.

I decreased the butter in the filling by one tablespoon, mainly because I had one stick short of a tablespoon in the fridge and decided that would have to be enough (don't think that I'm stingy on butter.  I'm not.  This recipe is not short of butter!).

Also, I don't exactly quite have a food processor.  I have a food processing attachment that goes with our immersion blender, which works great, but only ever holds about a cup or so of anything.  So I processed in smaller portions, mixed, processed some more, at least with the filling.  I did the crust by hand.  I realized that my pastry cutter (among many other things) is in storage, and cutting the butter in with knives wasn't floating my boat, so I rubbed the butter in with my (clean) fingers.  Mary Englebreit got me onto that, and sometimes it's quite handy.


Discovered (belatedly) that it would have been easier to simply press the chilled dough into the tartlet pans, rather than try to roll it out using my can of Baker's Joy.  I was afraid of overworking the dough, but as a result of not whaling on it, the crust was thicker than I intended.

But it tasted good.

The tartlet shells did shrink up just the tiniest but, but it actually made it easier to remove from the pan.

As for the lemon filling, it set up without any problems.  However, I actually think I'll use a regular lemon next time with the zest of a second lemon (as opposed to one Meyer Lemon).  Or maybe one Meyer Lemon and the zest of a regular lemon.

Anyway, not as sit up, hold the phone lemony as I wanted it to  be, so I'll tweak that for next time.  And don't get me wrong - there's definitely going to be a next time!

Cooking in a tiny hotel kitchen-let is not for the faint of heart (or specifically for the faint of heart, the kind who order take out all the time.  It can go either way).  With two burners (and one saucepan), it really forces me to streamline the prep process for anything I'm making.  But its been a good exercise in using things creatively.  Rather than sauté veggies every time, I may roast them in the mini-convection oven (which has proved its worth, btw) so I can use that second burner for something else.  If I'm making a brown-butter sage sauce, I skip the browning and melt the butter with the sage in the microwave.  Is it purist cooking? No, but it works.

Though sometimes, it's easier to order Thai.

Out and About in Tennessee

We had a wonderful weekend in Nashville last week.  Far and away, the highlight was the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. From the architecture to the gardens, to the sculptures to the Fabergé collection, it was absolutely worth the drive.

My favorite, the Glass Bridge by Siah Armajani, was created with the memory of the bridge designed to span the Grand Canal in Venice, during the heyday of Murano's glass industry. The original collapsed, but this one stands surrounded by oak trees.

This is bamboo in the forest near the Japanese gardens.  Almost makes me want a bamboo forest of my own.

Except I don't, because bamboo is like a tattoo for your yard.  Once it's there, it's not budging.

We also really loved the spider-web patterns formed in the melting ice over the ponds.  At some point, someone must have thrown rocks in, breaking the ice.  As it melted, it left the sheerest traces of patterned ice.

 Moments later, we literally watched as the wind blew over the surface.  When we returned 40 minutes later, most of the patterns were gone.  I shot these two photos with my point-and-shoot; I'm really pleased with how the exposure turned out, since it was entirely guesswork on my part (LCD screens not being wildly reliable).

We'll actually be going back to Nashville to meet up with some college friends of mine.  Since we weren't able to visit every part of the grounds (it's quite extensive), I'm not-so-secretly hoping to go back.

And when we return for a brief time to Memphis in June (most likely; we don't have solid dates yet), I'm hoping for another weekend Nashville trip.

In less sophisticated entertainment, we finally got to see the Peabody Ducks!

There they were! Swimming around and around in the fountain in the center of the lobby.  And after swimming, sometimes one would hop up on the ledge to get a look around...

...and preen.

Which makes sense, because it's not an insignificant audience.  We arrived twenty minutes ahead of the 5pm march out, and the place was packed!  We were able to get a spot on the mezzanine.  This was good, since we got a nice overhead view, but bad, because the flowers happened to block quite a lot of the exit.

Like, pretty much all of it.









After a while, the Duck Master (I'm totally not making this up) starts to prep the area by shoving away small children and preparing the red carpet.

Not an easy task.

After a rousing retelling of the hotel's origins - and how the ducks came to reside inside - the music played, the ducks swam more frantically, and the Duck Master called up!

And as far as I can tell, each duck jumped up.  But it's hard to say, because the flowers were in the way.

Then the Duck Master and the Honorary Duck Master (the elderly lady in the chair on the left, celebrating her 85th birthday, bless her) proceeded to walk the ducks down the red carpet.

At least that's my guess.  It's hard to see ducks when there are two adults walking behind them.  But they waddled (the ducks, not the adults) right into the elevator.

It was an excellent time.  As was dinner at Bhan Thai, which had one of the best Pad Thais I've had.  And very nice people, since I left my navy blue cardigan (the one I wear almost three times a week) and they not only found it but folded it nicely until we picked it up later.

We head back to the West coast on the 26th.  We both miss being near friends, family, and familiarity terribly.  But until then - we're still cramming in as much sight-seeing (and eating) as possible.  We'll meet Danny's cousin and great aunt at the Memphis Zoo tomorrow; Sunday, it's a whirlwind trip to Nashville.

And then...Washington!

Can't wait!

Travels, Part II

So we arrived in Memphis, and we pulled up at the place where we were to stay for the next three months.

The lobby smelled of stale cigarette smoke. I was worried but didn't say anything. We accepted our keys and walked down the musty hallway to our assigned room.

It didn't smell of stale cigarettes, but it did smell like slightly rancid fried potatoes. The furniture was dated and chipped. The carpet was stained. There were wires where the smoke detector used to be.

I plugged in one of my Febreeze scented-plug-ins, but had difficulty because all of the outlets were either upside-down or sideways. (Note: it wasn't until yesterday that I discovered that the Febreeze pluggy-thingy is actually rotatable. So keep that under your hat). Danny pulled out one of our power-strips and tied it around the chair in a slip-knot we could try to replace our room's greasy fryer scent.

But...by the time we found hairs of a concerning nature in various places in the bathroom...it was time to decamp.

Calls were made. Opinions asked. It was a tricky situation to be in, considering that Memphis, Tennessee is not anything like anywhere in Oregon, or anything like anywhere bordering Oregon. I don't wish to insult any from the south, but here's the thing - the Pacific Northwest and the Mid South are not like apples and oranges. They're like apples and dental floss.

Eventually, one of Danny's co-workers from Portland who was familiar(ish) with the area advised Danny to go to one of the Marriotts in Southaven, Mississippi, about 15 minutes away.

We did. We packed up, checked out, and fled.

The room at the Marriott was magical. By magical, I mean clean.

We spent the weekend looking at other extended-stay hotels. We made preliminary efforts to move to one on Monday that appeared to be safe and clean (better smell, no garbage or syringes to be seen), but were dissuaded from that when we learned that the company had sent employees to that one before, who had reported that there were prostitutes roaming the hallways. In what capacity, we didn't know, but just the same we elected to move to another hotel farther east, bordering Germantown.

It's been better. The hallways are still stale and the toilet burps sometimes when others flush, which apparently means something's wrong with the plumbing somewhere in a very bad way...but nothing bad's happened yet, so here's hoping. Visited Target and TJ Maxx and picked up things to make it a bit homier.

So far? Memphis is very different from Oregon. Everyone sounds like Paula Dean. I've yet to be able to get a spring greens salad at a restaurant (though the Macaroni Grill had a romaine salad with a bit of frisee on top), but we've been able to find things we were expecting to do without, such as Oregon Chai tea concentrate and Odwalla juices. We had wonderful Thai Iced Teas at dinner the other night (though the Pad Thai was not the best. Danny's dish was good, though). There's a Whole Foods close by with lots of options - I'm hoping (hoping!!) that I might be able to find Tillamook cheese...

Recycling? Not so much.

Oh, and another thing? In Oregon, if the speed limit is 55 - especially if it's in-town driving - at most people are traveling at 62 or so. Memphis? It averages around 70 to 75, with some people in the end lanes traveling around 85-90.

On our drive from the Marriott to our extended stay hotel, my hands were so tight on the steering wheel I had wrist pain afterwards.

Our plans? Find good barbeque. Our first venture out sent us to a well-recommended and much-loved restaurant that no longer existed, and in its place was okay barbeque and depressing sides (green beans from a can. An old can). But everyone's telling Danny to go to Central Barbeque, so that's our destination after we see Dawn Treader. Looking forward to a night out together!

Plot Twist

One of the reasons I haven't blogged much is that I've had to be careful. Very careful. Because things have been very much up in the air.

The big news? Danny got a wonderful job as a Project Engineer in Richland, Washington. It's with Barnhart Crane and Rigging, the company you call if you need a nuclear reactor moved. And yes, there are nuclear reactors in Richland. Hence the job placement.

It wasn't what we expected, though. Danny's been pursued by this company for several months now, for the last bit of it we were looking at a move to Memphis, Tennessee, where the company is headquartered. It was all Memphis, Memphis, Memphis, we love you in Memphis, until we got the offer letter for...Richland. Which was a surprise, but a good one.

Things I like about Richland/Tri-Cities:

1. It's still in the Pacific Northwest. No gigantic culture or time-zone changes.

2. It's within driving distance for family. This has the parents kicking up their heels like it's 1999.

3. The weather is dryer (it's the desert side of Washington), so I won't be as susceptible to barometric-pressure-caused headaches and creakiness of the knees.

4. Nearness of Tillamook Cheese.

5. Nearness of Oregon Chai.

6. Nearness of Odwalla Juice.

7. Availability of Topography (I don't do flat. I equate flat with post-apocalyptic.)

8. The Columbia river flows nearby. I like that river.

We will still be in Memphis, Tennessee for 4-6 months while Danny does the mandatory company engineer training, where he'll get to learn to weld and do all sorts of fun man activities.

I, on the other hand, will be writing a book.

Likely at Panera.

The story about the photo above? Not knowing when/if we would be leaving, I went out and took pictures of some of my favorite trees near our apartment complex a couple weeks ago. This shot was my absolute favorite :-)